Friday, April 25, 2008

Why Knitting is Better Than a Broken Washing Machine

You know how when you come home from a long day to find that your ancient-of-ancients came-with-the-house-but-no-manual-7-years-ago washing machine has spewed water all over the floor for the second time in as many weeks, and since your husband of 17 years has decided to split, you grab your handy-dandy copy of Any Idiot Can Fix a Major Home Appliance With No Prior Experience Whatsoever - For Dummies, only to find that not one single reference work on the planet internet can tell you how to remove the top of your particular washing machine* to get at the part you have oh-so cleverly self diagnosed**, so you have to call him anyway and it makes you feel like a big, helpless girly girl-baby?

Yeah, that's frustrating.

Anyway, at least we have knitting! Here are, at long long last, Anne's Lacy Diamante Socks:

I'm calling them Anne's because they were supposed to be my project for the long-finished Anne of Green Gables Knit & Read Along. Remember how Anne thought diamonds were purple? Right.

The yarn: Bare by KnitPicks, dyed by Celena, received in a swap. Most excellent dye job, Celena!The original pattern: Diamante by Deb Barnhill via Knitty.Modifications: Used a figure-8 cast on. Did yarn-overs instead of make1s for a lacier look. I like that they are just a little lacy.

The other major modification (I'm still geekin' out about it! - Syndrome) was knitting them with 5 dpns instead of two circulars. Experience-free as I am, even I can see where 2 circs would be easier for this pattern, but it worked out.

And since these took me so long (which is in NO WAY the fault of the designer - they knit up pretty quickly when I actually worked on them), I have decided to try something new:

6 comments:

Oh dear!I had the same trouble with my somewhat-new-paid-for-it-all-with-my-own-money, machines not long ago.I really feared it might have been a big wad of wool in the pump from felting without a zippered pillow case, but turned out to be a wee sock in the pump back up by a lot of dog and cat hair! The repair guy gave me a very weird look when he not only had to pull all the pet hair and sock from the pump but, had to put the machine back together again because I took it apart trying to find the ‘supposed’ wool in the pump so I wouldn't get that weird look! Well when it happened I wanted to say "I don't care what you think about my mechanical skills! I can knit a sock, can you? So there.” then stick out my tongue. But my grown up side of the brain told me not to.

our washer once stopped doing the agitation of the wash. Disgustingly it was that way for a little while before we figured out the problem, things just didn't seem to get clean. Luckily it was an easy under 100 dollar fix but i was afraid our vacation would have to be cancelled as we would have to buy a new machine!